Sauce for the gander: We opined earlier on the McCain campaigns seemingly deliberate attempt to not show profile pictures of the left side of Senator McCain’s face.
This time we’re wondering about the Obama’s decision to heavily straighten and curl their daughters’ hair.
And again, someone else beat us to it:
Although GWB seems to be OK with Putin’s soul, we’re a bit uncertain.
A very strange case: Caylee Marie Anthony is missing.
It struck me as odd that there would be so many pictures and videos of John McCain that only show the right side of his face. Although his campaign probably wouldn’t admit it, this is more than just coincidence.
I was going to do a bit of analysis but found that someone else had hit on the same notion.
That analysis is published here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/5/115020/2210/327/529532
- -This has been very difficult to write. How to be critical of the YFZ Ranch raid without condoning the behavior of some of the adherents of the FLDS Church that lived on the ranch. The adherents who have committed atrocities in the name of their religion no doubt have a special place reserved for them.- -
Four years ago Flora Jessop contacted Eldorado, Texas newspaper editor Randy Mankin and tipped him that the construction north of town was being done by the FLDS Church. As a result of the tip, his paper ran an article titled “Corporate Retreat or Prophet’s Refuge?”.
Subsequently, Flora Jessop and Schleicher County, Texas sheriff David Doran began an ongoing relationship. She was “educating” the sheriff about the culture of FLDS adherents.
Simultaneously, Sheriff Doran, the State of Texas, and the United States Government were preparing plans for a raid of the ranch. Doran is quoted as saying: “We’re not going to violate their (FLDS) civil rights until we get an outcry.” and on his numerous visits to the ranch: “There was no evidence of illegal activity, nor an offense in plain view.”
A more accurate description of the rights involved would be “Constitutional Rights” as opposed to “Civil Rights”.
“The Constitution … of the United States assert(s) that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press.”
- Thomas Jefferson
So the entire time that the FLDS Church had been in his county, the sheriff had visited the ranch numerous times and found no evidence of illegal activity. Despite that, the raid planning went on until they got that “outcry”. It just so happens that the outcry came from a 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman whom activists say made recent hoax phone calls to them.
In this case, Texas and Federal agents targeted this Church because it was FLDS. And when they raided the YFZ Ranch, they kept the press “Miles away from the ranch.” They were able to get away with this because of the foment generated against the practices of the FLDS members. A foment largely stoked by Flora Jessop. The FLDS adherents don’t fit the homogenized standards of society and are, therefore, not normal. And abnormal people are easy targets. Rather than the press crying foul against the Government restrictions, they fanned the flamed with carefully chosen words such as: “Compound”, “Polygamist”, “Sect”, “Sex Abuse”, “Child Abuse”, and “Rape”. All words that the homogenized will eat up. Almost never were the words prefaced with “alleged”.
No, these were not just spurious allegations by the Government. These were portrayed as truths beyond any shadow of a doubt. A Judge who described herself as “simple”, has so far proven that moniker to be right on. She has made the choice to side with the Agents instead of the Constitution.
In a 1949 Free Speech case, Associate Justice Robert Jackson wrote, in a dissenting opinion: “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the Constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”
Big Government proponents of all stripes have used the “Constitution is not a suicide pact” argument as the Excuse Du Jour for all manner of violating our Constitutional rights.
The net result is that if a Texas shelter gets “an outcry”, the government can then proceed, with prejudice, to trample the rights of the Church into the ground. And be held harmless.
It did not go unnoticed that the government allowed buses from the “First Baptist Church” to take FLDS Church members from the ranch. What do you think would happen if the government used buses from the “First Baptist Church” to haul Muslims from a Mosque that had been raided? I suspect that the righteous indignation would be palpable.
We walk a fine line, in these here United States of America, between law, order, anarchy, freedom and liberty. If the government wants to squelch our Constitutional Rights, then let them do it by the means the Constitutional Framers provided, in great foresight, Constitutional Amendment.
Given our recent history we’re probably more likely to be concerned about how much time Britney has spent in rehab than we are with pesky little details like our Constitutional Rights.
Although I would never find myself in synchronization with the FLDS Church, I gave my life, in effect, to fight for their Constitutional Rights.
I would be the first to say intervene if there is evidence that children are being sexually abused. No matter what the context; However, an absence of evidence precludes the government from, or should preclude the government from, “raiding” private property, and “removing” citizens against their will.
This case perpetuates the notion that if you want to get at someone, just make a call to an anonymous hotline and their whole life will be turned upside down. Regardless if they have actually done anything wrong.
Maybe GenNex will, en masse, think that our Constitution is worth honoring and will govern in accordance with its doctrines.
Maybe not.
There is a growing consensus among today’s generation of power-hungry pols and unelected bureaucrats that the people should not be given information on how the government operates because the people don’t know how to interpret the information.
Isn’t that special?
Anyone who has extensive experience with the VA mental health system knows that PTSD is a four letter word. VA mental health practitioners will go to extreme lengths to not diagnose and not treat PTSD.
The reason for this is driven by economics.
As evidenced in the most recent VA employee email controversy.
In the email a VA employee states the “actual” policy of the VA instead of the “published” policy. Anyone who has been victimized by the VA system will tell you that the VA will go to extraordinary lengths to deny Veterans the benefits that the law allows. Giving an incorrect diagnosis is just one example. How about conducting C&P exams for the same issue over-and-over until the desired result is achieved. That result being one doctor who will state that they don’t believe the issue is service-connected and the Veteran is just “compensation seeking”. And it’s not just PTSD, but PTSD is the hot potato that the VA doesn’t want to acknowledge.
I’ll be the first to tell you that there are a whole bunch of leeches that lied and cheated their way into getting VA benefits. They should be prosecuted for fraud just like anyone else; However, that should not be an excuse for the VA to paint all Veterans as “compensation seekers”.
“I disagree with the premise that there was some effort to cover something up,” Kussman testified Thursday. “We don’t obfuscate.”
That came from testimony Kussman gave in the “Veterans Lawsuit“.
In an article appearing in The Saginaw News on May 9th, Jean Spenner states: “Comments from Ed Mason, president of the union chapter at the center, must go through the public affairs office, said Carrie Seward, public affairs officer.”
The story is about a hangman’s noose that was found in an employees locker at the VA hospital in Saginaw.
I have been a very vocal critic of the VA spin and rotation propaganda machine for a long time.
And that’s why. At the same time that Kussman is testifying, under oath, that the VA doesn’t obfuscate, Carrie Seward is giving us another example of just how the VA does obfuscate.
By ensuring that all comments from the employee union president are routed through her, Carrie Seward can guarantee that only the “Official Message” makes it out.
And that’s the way the VA works. Just like in the email that Katz sent to the VA spin doctor Everett (call me Ev) Chasen asking for guidance on how to spin the fact that 17 Veterans EVERY DAY are committing suicide.
The Nazi and Soviet propaganda machines could have learned many lessons from the VA.
The Chinese, Cuban, and Myanmar propaganda machines still can.
Another Hearing Another Day. The Hearing is being pimped as “The Truth About Veterans Suicides”.
The first panel of witnesses is Peake, Cross, and Katz. Would you trust these three and their minions to provide valuable testimony at a hearing?
Maybe the committee missed the emails.
If you, and me, and a few thousand of our friends faxed the emails to the committee at (202) 225-2034 or called the committee at (202) 225-9756 and refreshed their memories.
Remind them that Peake, Kussman, and Katz think that it is OK that 120 Veterans are committing suicide every week.
You know what they will say, don’t you? They will say that they are going to “grill” them. The politicians will feign righteous indignation and will tell those VA bureaucrats that they are “angry” and “frustrated”.
The politicians will read “heartfelt” statements that were prepared by high-paid lawyer staffers.
Another sham hearing just so politicians can posture.
At the end of the day the VA will still be unwilling, to the point of belligerence, to do anything about the Veterans Suicide Epidemic.
PORTLAND, Ore. – With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. Her first home run cleared the center-field fence.But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury.
She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.
Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count – an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.
Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky.
The umpire said there was no rule against it.
So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky’s legs, and she put her arms over their shoulders. The three headed around the base paths, stopping to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg.
“The only thing I remember is that Mallory asked me which leg was the one that hurt,” Tucholsky said. “I told her it was my right leg and she said, ‘OK, we’re going to drop you down gently and you need to touch it with your left leg,’ and I said ‘OK, thank you very much.’”
“She said, ‘You deserve it, you hit it over the fence,’ and we all kind of just laughed.”
“We started laughing when we touched second base,” Holtman said. “I said, ‘I wonder what this must look like to other people.’”
“We didn’t know that she was a senior or that this was her first home run,” Wallace said Wednesday. “That makes the story more touching than it was. We just wanted to help her.”
Holtman said she and Wallace weren’t thinking about the playoff spot, and didn’t consider the gesture something others wouldn’t do.
As for Tucholsky, the 5-foot-2 right fielder was focused on her pain.
“I really didn’t say too much. I was trying to breathe,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday.
“I didn’t realize what was going on until I had time to sit down and let the pain relax a little bit,” she said. “Then I realized the extent of what I actually did.”
“I hope I would do the same for her in the same situation,” Tucholsky added.
As the trio reached home plate, Tucholsky said, the entire Western Oregon team was in tears.
Central Washington coach Gary Frederick, a 14-year coaching veteran, called the act of sportsmanship “unbelievable.”
For Western Oregon coach Pam Knox, the gesture resolved the dilemma Tucholsky’s injury presented.
“She was going to kill me if we sub and take (the home run) away. But at the same time I was concerned for her. I didn’t know what to do,” Knox said.
Tucholsky’s injury is a possible torn ligament that will sideline her for the rest of the season, and she plans to graduate in the spring with a degree in business. Her home run sent Western Oregon to a 4-2 victory, ending Central Washington’s chances of winning the conference and advancing to the playoffs.
“In the end, it is not about winning and losing so much,” Holtman said. “It was about this girl. She hit it over the fence and was in pain, and she deserved a home run.”
Anyone who has been a homeless Veteran knows about the “monkey trail”. In Washington, D.C. there’s a comparable occurrence. It’s the never ending flow of bureaucrats from 810 Vermont Ave. NW to Capitol Hill and back.
One key difference between these groups is that the homeless Veteran has nothing to carry and the VA bureaucrat has another bureaucrat carrying their water.
Lately, many of these bureaucrats have been trudging up the Hill to tell “outraged” politicians that the VA has hired gazillions of mental health professionals to help alleviate the non-existent Veterans suicide epidemic.
What the bureaucrats don’t tell and what the politicians don’t ask is how many of the existing mental health professionals are quitting the VA in droves, or are being fired or forced into “early retirement”.
The reason for this is simple. They do this because if people knew the truth they would be outraged and demand accountability. They don’t like accountability. Accountability is hard. Feigning outrage is easy, and it plays well on TV.
However, some people are doing some research at websites like http://www.fedscope.opm.gov/index.asp
And an interesting thing shows up in the statistics. An example is the 4th quarter of FY08. In that quarter the VHA had 8,049 accessions and 4,865 separations during that quarter.
Net result = 3,184 new people. The VA won’t tell you that though. They just talk about the accessions.
The end strength reported for 4Q FY08 in VHA is 233,274. Ira Katz claims that 17,000 of those are mental health professionals. He also claims that the mental health professionals group consists of: “part-time psychiatrists, part-time psychologists, social workers, mental health nurses, counselors, rehabilitation specialists, and other clinicians.”
Why doesn’t he mention residents? Anyone who has been a victim of VA healthcare knows that the vast majority of the experimentation done on Veterans is done by residents.
The majority of the time that the part-time psychiatrists and psychologists spend is on the supervision of these residents.
Is the term “other clinicians” a codeword for resident? We think it is.
Bottom Line? The VA is engaging in fuzzy math tactics to alleviate the intense scrutiny that would come from honesty and forthrightness.
The unobfuscated truth is that only seven percent of VHA employees are “mental health professionals”.
It is reasonable to conclude that there are at least 1 million Veterans seeking mental health treatment through the VA. That is twenty percent of enrolled Veterans. Logic would suggest that seven percent of employees dedicated to twenty percent of the “population” is a woefully inadequate response.
O! Wait. We forgot.
“I disagree with the premise that there was some effort to cover something up,” Kussman testified Thursday. “We don’t obfuscate.”
Silly me! The VA doesn’t obfuscate.
So Senators Murray and Akaka are holding a press conference today to “Talk about the state of mental health care at the VA and renew their calls for strong leadership and improved care.”
We still haven’t heard anything from Akaka about why he circumvented the normal process and scheduled the confirmation vote on the Peake nomination “expeditiously”, despite assurances by the committee that there would be 48 hours advance notice.
We also haven’t heard why Akaka is only calling for the resignation of Ira Katz and not any other criminally culpable VA bureaucrat.
Murray stated during Peake’s confirmation hearing: “While we shouldn’t dwell on the mistakes of the past, we must learn from them and I expect General Peake to
learn from his predecessors’ failures. If he fails to change the direction of this agency, he will have to answer for it.”
On the nomination of Kussman, Akaka stated: “I urge you, Dr. Kussman: if you are confirmed, to first and foremost serve as an advocate for veterans. I am quite cognizant of the constraints placed upon you by the White House and OMB. I promise you my full
cooperation and assistance, but I tell you now, that I will not be satisfied unless you work to uphold the promises made to all our troops.”
Because Akaka has a warm and fuzzy relationship with Kussman he is satisfied with Kussman’s status as “advocate” despite the email in which Kussman accepts that it is OK for 120 Veterans per week committing suicide because there are 24 million Veterans.
Because neither Murray nor Akaka are doing anything besides political posturing, Peake, Kussman, Katz, Chasen, Zeiss, Cross, Van Diepen, O’Grady, and a whole host of other VA bureaucrats who committed felonies by covering up information that could save countless Veterans lives, are getting another free pass.
When will these criminals be brought to justice? If their fate lies with Murray and Akaka, the answer is never.
Never in this time, that is. Their actions committed in the dark will be brought into the light, sooner or later, and they will have to answer.
Despite the unassailable smoking gun evidence of the emails, Peake stated:
“The notion we’re not trying to get the truth out there is erroneous”
Fascinating. Peake also thought that the complaints he was getting about Walter Reed were “erroneous” when he was the Army Surgeon General. The hypermyopia of Peake, Kussman, Katz, and others is doing nothing to stop the Veterans suicide epidemic. The May 6th hearing is listed as “The Truth about Veterans Suicides”. It seems that if Congress wanted to get at the truth, the last person on Earth to testify at that hearing would be Peake. Congress could hold hearings every day, all day, and have an inexhaustible supply of witnesses in the group of War Veterans that have attempted suicide and the parents of War Veterans who succeeded. When will we say “enough”? When 220 War Veterans a week are committing suicide? 440? 880? When? Until Peake and his ilk are held accountable there will be no progress, it will only get worse.
It’s pretty thoroughly reported that there is an epidemic of suicides amongst Veterans. One way the VA deals with Veterans who are severely mentally ill and symptomatic is to kick them out of the VA health care system and deny or terminate any financial benefits that they are entitled to by law.
The reason the VA does this is driven by the image police. The absolute last thing that the VA wants to deal with is the ramifications that would result from a VA employee being killed by a Veteran.
That would look to the public like there are crazed killer Veterans on the loose and everyone is in danger.
To avoid this, the VA has a policy of severe overreaction. If you are a mentally ill Veteran and have an “outburst” or are determined to be “uncooperative” you are immediately removed by police and permanently banned from receiving treatment at VA facilities.
A perfect example is the case of Sonny Anthony Iovino, a 55-year-old, mentally ill Vietnam veteran who froze to death under the Benton St. Bridge.
From that Wall Street Journal article: “Local police officers had tried to get Iovino the care he needed just 48 hours before his death. But he was refused a bed at the local homeless shelter and then turned away from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center here because he was “uncooperative.”
Another example is my own personal story of being the victim of VA “care”. Anyone who wants to hear it can contact me.
The VA should be, without exception, a place where a Veteran can get life-saving treatment. The actual risk to persons posed by mentally ill Veterans, or mentally ill anybody for that matter, is extremely low and easily mitigated. There are obvious exceptions; However, the number of Veterans killed by VA “professionals” is countless.
The VA’s policies toward Veterans are simply abhorrent. That’s why when I hear these bureaucrats and clueless politicians claim that Veterans are getting “World Class Care” I say BULLSHIT.
I’m shocked.
23 April, 2008
Senator Akaka:
In the spirit of Ho’ohanohano Na Koa.
On behalf of the millions of voiceless Veterans of the United States Military Services who are not members of the VFW, DAV, AMVETS, PVA, or American Legion, it is time for you to resign from the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
Senator Akaka, you were entrusted to do right by America’s Veterans. All of us. You have failed that trust.
Perhaps the most heinous of your violations is hypocrisy. You are a hypocrite Senator, and we have had it up to here with hypocritical politicians.
Senator Akaka, you speak out of both sides of your mouth, and by so doing have set back the cause of Veterans.
In the May 2007 hearing on the nomination of Michael Kussman to be Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs you stated:
“I urge you, Dr. Kussman: if you are confirmed, to first and foremost serve as an advocate for veterans. I am quite cognizant of the constraints placed upon you by the White House and OMB. I promise you my full cooperation and assistance, but I tell you now, that I will not be satisfied unless you work to uphold the promises made to all our troops.”
You seem to be perfectly satisfied with Kussman’s performance. Despite the fact that Kussman believes that a suicide rate of 120 Veterans per week is acceptable. Kussman states:
“Folks,
In the Clips this morning. our friend Chris Adams in the McLatchy (sic) Papers alleges that 18 veterans kill themselves every day and this is confirmed by the VA’s own statistics. Is that true? Sounds awful but if one is considering 24 million veterans.”
Despite that mind set, Senator, it appears that you have decided that Ira Katz should resign, and Kussman is off the hook.
Senator Akaka, do you share Kussman’s beliefs that 120 Veterans committing suicide every week is acceptable?
Do you find Kussman’s obvious disdain for Chris Adams palatable?
Senator Akaka, you will probably get no criticism from other quarters. You have acted quickly to call for Katz’sresignation. That will suffice for most.
The tell of your sincerity will be in the response, or lack of response.
You will have to answer for what is done in the dark. It will be brought to the light.
Senator Akaka, the honorable thing to do, in the spirit of Ho’ohanohano Na Koa, would be to demand that the VA “leaders” who have lied to Congress under oath are prosecuted for that felony. Anything short of that will be seen by the VA as a weakness in Congress and will be taken as an explicit endorsement of their actions.
They will then remain secure in the culture that has been created and will continue to amass power and wealth on the backs of the voiceless.
You may have heard about the lawsuit. Evidence presented includes emails from Ira Katz. He is the main mental health bureaucrat at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
In this email Katz tells Everett (Call me Ev) Chasen to keep quiet about internal numbers on Veterans suicides.
In this email Katz acknowledges what is being widely reported that there are 120 Veterans per week committing suicide. In that same email, the Under Secretary for Health at the VA, Michael Kussman, states that 120 Veterans per week committing suicide “Sounds awful but if one is considering 24 million veterans.”
So the Under Secretary for Health at the VA, who is an Army Veteran, believes that 120 Veterans committing suicide per week is OK because there are “24 million”.
Since these emails became public, politicians were quick to jump on the bandwagon and feign righteous indignation.
Message to politicians: Too Little, Too Late.
These same politicians who are now feigning righteous indignation are the same politicians who have heaped praise on these VA bureaucrats for “Doing the right thing for Veterans”.
We have been telling these politicians for a long time that their praise is misguided. we have been telling them that there is a culture in the VA bureaucracy of Obfuscate, Deny, Manipulate, Lie, Spin, and apply the full weight of the VA propaganda machine to make sure that the VA “message” is one that disparages critics and buries bad press.
These emails are the absolute best evidence to completely obliterate the rosy facade the VA propaganda machine has built to mislead the public.
Our heartfelt thanks go to CBS News, Armen Keteyian, Pia Malbran, and the rest of the crew that worked so hard on the exhaustive investigation into the epidemic of Veterans suicides.
Our heartfelt thanks also go to all of the good people involved in the lawsuit. Godspeed.
Please join us in telling Congress that we expect that these VA bureaucrats who have lied to Congress, under oath, will be prosecuted for that felony.
Maybe if one or two dozen of the most heinous of these people are given a perp walk, the rest of the VA bureaucrats will take notice and straighten up their act.
Said Dr. Orsak. “No one was ignoring this, and everyone was working hard on the fixes. And then you have a tragedy and you realize there’s more you can do, and some patients have such a will to end their lives, it’s hard to protect them.”
The Orsak quote is in this article.
She is just another VA employee who would rather blame Veterans for the chronic and massive failures of the VA than take responsibility for those failures.
When will the VA do what they said they would do, and what the law tells them they must do, to end the epidemic of suicides among Veterans?
O. I forgot. There is no suicide epidemic among Veterans.
We wonder how Catherine Orsak can look at herself in a mirror after disparaging Veterans so heinously.
Some of you will remember several members of congress undertaking a public campaign for lower cereal prices in 1995.
Today, cereal was on the grocery list. When I looked over the grocery bill it hit me like a brick that my cheap, Malt O Meal, cereal wasn’t cheap anymore.
Lucky I had a receipt from one year ago that had my cereal on it. In May of 07 this cereal was USD $3.78. Today it is 5.69.
That’s a 35% increase.
The World Food Program reports about a 40% increase in food prices from last year.
American food banks are straining under the pressure of increased demand for their services.
When will we start seeing food riots, like those going on in Haiti, here in the USofA?
You don’t think that can happen? Fine. Go ahead and lay down on the railroad tracks of history.
From ABC NEWS
Veterans Charity Fires Commander Who Blew Whistle on Wasteful Spending
“They were incensed that I would tell the world how their donated money was being wasted,” said Henry Cook, national commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH).
This kind of fraud is not exclusive to this charity. There is massive waste, fraud, and abuse going on at several organizations. Most notably the organizations that have a Congressional Charter.
It seems that they somehow think that because they have a Congressional Charter they are above reproach. Because they think they are above reproach, corruption has metastasized through the “leadership” of the worst offenders.
More details can be found here
From http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4443788
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.
The article about VA employees spending 2.6 billion dollars on stuff like luxury hotel stays in Las Vegas.
Do you think that any VA employees will be criminally prosecuted for fraud?
A little rant about the murder of at least 29 Veterans at the VAMC in Marion Illinois. The VA didn’t call them murders though. The VA called them “accidents”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CGcXzuAPTQ
Why is it that whenever political secrets are exposed, the politicians all go on-and-on about their words being “taken out of context”?
There is a massive sense of disappointment in Barack Obama. He was widely believed to be sincere about his “change” rhetoric. As time passes, it becomes more clear that he is just another politician, and not the change agent we so desperately need in this country.
There has been enormous amounts of media coverage of the “Is Obama Wright” hate speech debacle. http://youtube.com/watch?v=72B3tUAqpo4
There has been much less critical analysis of “NAFTAgate”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fcujtEX-Ok
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWNjOGQ1MDI4NjViMWQwMGM0MmZkMzNkMzY2NTU2NjY=
If NAFTAgate is any indication of what kind of foreign relations policy an Obama administration will engage in, we might be in trouble.
From http://www.gregpalast.com/
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an “escort” $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.
Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.
The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.
Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the “sub-prime” mortgage and it’s variants including loans with teeny “introductory” interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called “Countrywide” became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chuck of these “sub-prime.”
Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 a month payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. Grinnings move into their Toyota.
Now, what kind of American is “sub-prime.” Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid - they had no choice. They were “steered” as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.
“Steering,” sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called “fraudulent conveyance” or “predatory lending” under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.
But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hardy - it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.
But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.
Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup’s Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called “securitization.”
What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinnings, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into “tranches” of bonds which were stamped “AAA” - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).
When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will “earn” a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars - he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.
But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide’s stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.
Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.
The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure - and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no “quid” of a foreclosure moratorium for the “pro quo” of public bail-out. Not one family was saved - but not one banker was left behind.
Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.
And that very same day the bail-out was decided - what a coinkydink! - the man called, “The Sheriff of Wall Street” was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.
Do I believe the banks called Justice and said, “Take him down today!” Naw, that’s not how the system works. But the big players knew that unless Spitzer was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to spoil the party. Headlines in the financial press - one was “Wall Street Declares War on Spitzer” - made clear to Bush’s enforcers at Justice who their number one target should be. And it wasn’t Bin Laden.
It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:
“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which he federal government was turning a blind eye.”
Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the “Predator Lenders” Partner in Crime.” The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet.
Spitzer wrote, “When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably.”
But now, the Administration can rest assured that this love story - of Bush and his bankers - will not be told by history at all - now that the Sheriff of Wall Street has fallen on his own gun.
A note on “Prosecutorial Indiscretion.”
Back in the day when I was an investigator of racketeers for government, the federal prosecutor I was assisting was deciding whether to launch a case based on his negotiations for airtime with 60 Minutes. I’m not allowed to tell you the prosecutor’s name, but I want to mention he was recently seen shouting, “Florida is Rudi country! Florida is Rudi country!”
Not all crimes lead to federal bust or even public exposure. It’s up to something called “prosecutorial discretion.”
Funny thing, this “discretion.” For example, Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him diapers (ewww!), yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him.
Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer - rarely done in these cases - was made at the “discretion” of Bush’s Justice Department.
Or maybe we should say, ‘indiscretion.’
Greg Palast, former investigator of financial fraud, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Three Things to Ponder:
1. Cows
2. The Constitution
3. The Ten Commandments
C O W S
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.
T H E C O N S T I T U T I O N
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we’re not using it anymore.
T H E 1 0 C O M M A N D M E N T S
The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this:You cannot post “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,” and “Thou Shall Not Lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians…It creates a hostile work environment.
On December 6th 2007 the FBI arrested Michael Eugene Cook for threatening to kill two VA doctors.
On January 4th 2008 The Anniston Star reported that he was also charged with threatening a federal law enforcement officer.
We wonder what kinds of demons Michael Cook is battling. And wouldn’t it make more sense for the Government to help Michael instead of prosecuting him?
We also wonder how many VA doctors have been arrested for actually murdering Veterans. We believe the answer is zero.
“Any nation willing to ask its men and women to risk their lives serving overseas must also be willing to take care of them when they come home. Veterans deserve dignified care, and we can’t provide that with a VA that is run like the Postal Service or the IRS.”
– Dr. Ron Paul
I received the following in a Veteran’s Newsletter that I’d like to share.
VA BUDGET 2009 UPDATE: Some say budget request would not meet VA’s requirements. Following are some of the media/congressional comments regarding the Bush proposal:
• Congressional Quarterly reported, “The Veterans Affairs Department (VA) would receive only a modest boost for veterans’ medical needs in fiscal 2009, which Democrats said would not meet the agency’s requirements.” The White House’s budget request contains a total of $91.2 billion for the VA, including $44.8 billion in discretionary spending. The proposed discretionary spending is a modest increase over the $43.1 billion appropriated to the department through the fiscal 2008 omnibus spending law. And, while VA Secretary James B. Peake said the budget request builds on VA’s past successes in providing veterans with timely, accessible delivery of high quality benefits and services earned through their sacrifice and service in defense of freedom some Democrats said the VA medical budget could fall short of projected needs. • Tim Johnson (DSD), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Military Construction Subcommittee, said, “The administration has proposed an increase in funding for the VA, but I’m concerned the need will outpace the increase.” • The AP reported Sen. Jon Tester (DMT) said the budget proposal is about as out of touch with Montana values as you can get. It racks up nearly a trillion dollars in new debt while containing nearly $2 billion in new fees on veterans who want to use the VA. We need a budget that prioritizes working families, rural America , infrastructure, veterans and health care, especially for our children. If President Bush isn’t going to prioritize these things in his budget, Congress will in ours. • USA Today said that with its budget request, the Bush administration is again seeking to charge health care enrollment fees to veterans with no service injuries and incomes above $50,000, along with charging a hike in prescription drug copayments from $8 to $15. Congress, however, has denied both before. USA Today added that outlook in Congress for the request can best be summed up by Sen. Daniel Akaka (DHI), the head of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Akaka called the proposal inadequate: ‘It’s just not enough.’” • The New York Times added, “The president proposes to raise $2 billion from new enrollment fees and higher pharmacy copayments for certain veterans receiving health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.” • The Marine Corps Times reports VA Secretary Peake praised the White House request for VA funding, saying, “If you look at health care, it’s more than double what it was seven years ago.” The Times added, “One of the biggest issues facing VA is overwhelmed case workers who can’t keep up with the thousands of new benefits claims that continue to pour in,” • Rita Reese, principal deputy assistant secretary for management, said VA plans to increase the number of fulltime case workers. She added that the budget plan aims to reduce the disability claims backlog to 298,000 by the end of fiscal 2009, a drop of 24%. Reese also said the average length of time required to rule on an initial benefits claim will drop from the current 180 days to about 145 days, a 21% improvement over 2007. • UPI added that President Bush’s 2009 budget pushes for implementation of recommendations from the Commission on Care for America ’s Returning Wounded Warriors. The VA budget, unveiled Tuesday, seeks $41.2 billion for medical care, which Bush said was more than double the amount the department received when Bush took office. Picking up themes from his State of the Union address last week, Bush said the administration also would seek enactment of commission recommendations, including modernizing of disability compensation systems, expanding treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder and strengthening support for families. • The Wall Street Journal reported a major expansion included in the proposed budget was a 28% increase to $348 million for the Veterans Affairs Department. • Government Executive reported, “The Veterans Affairs Department would see a nearly 18% jump in its information technology budget if Congress approves President Bush’s fiscal 2009 budget request.” The administration earmarked $2.53 billion for VA’s tech budget in 2009, up from $2.15 billion in 2008. • VA officials said the bulk of the $380 million increase will be allocated to programs to enhance veteran services, to cover inflationary cost increases, replace aging equipment, build new facilities and add services.”[Source: News from Around the Country 5 Feb 08 ++]
My personal opinion is the budget falls woefully short of providing real need for veterans. I do applaud the Senators from South Dakato and Montana for taking the stand they did for veterans. I give the President “two thumbs down” for believing (as I read it) that veterans can afford higher copayments at the pharmacy. Has for Secretary Peakes comments, well Grandma alway’s said “Consider the source”. - Dorin
Mad Dog sent me a newsletter. In the newsletter was an article. In the article, Its (VA) ratings for quality of care and customer satisfaction have risen even as the patient load has increased.” She goes on in the article to parrot information provided by the Commission on the Future for America’s Veterans.
Back in June of 2007, we expressed some concerns we had with that “Commission” to the Executive Director, David Sevier. Out of one side of the commission’s mouth they stated: “Dr. Kizer, former VA Undersecretary for Health from 1994 to 1999, is widely credited with turning around VA’s health care system.”
Out of the other side of the commission’s mouth they stated: “In fact, the Commission is intent upon nothing less than the total transformation of a “badly broken agency” (VA). These commissioners are as tired of the disfunction as anyone, probably a lot more since they’ve had to try to make it work in the past.”
As we said to David Sevier then, we say to
If David, Katherine, Hillary, Barack, or anyone else would like to know the actual truth, without shaping by the VA spin and rotation machine, let us know.
We recently discovered that there is this “thing” called the “Taxpayer Advocate Service” (TAS). The TAS, allegedly, reports directly to Congress and is outside the influence of the IRS.
In a report that the TAS submitted to Congress titled: “Fiscal Year 2008 Objectives”, we found this on page 58:
“The Influence of Social Norms and Cognitive Processes on Taxpayer Compliance
Traditional theories attribute taxpayer compliance solely to a fear of detection and punishment. These deterrence models of taxpayer compliance have poor explanatory power. Current research demonstrates that the choice to comply is not purely rational. Rather, personal values, social norms, and non-rational cognitive processes also strongly affect the decision.
In another contractor study, TAS is seeking to identify and analyze the reasons why taxpayers comply with the tax laws. The contractor will review and summarize current research on how values, norms, and cognitive processes influence compliance behavior and will develop recommendations concerning how research in this field can be applied to
improving tax administration and voluntary compliance.”
We haven’t been able to figure out who the contractor is or how much the contractor was paid. We are, however, convinced that the amount spent was too much and the contractor has excellent political connections.
We can’t make this kind of stuff up.
There are some things that are beyond our ability to comprehend. One such is why no writer from The Onion – America’s Finest News Source has never won a Pulitzer.
In a stunning example of the insightful and unparalleled reporting found in The Onion – America’s Finest News Source we invite you to peruse the story: Giants: ‘We Almost Beat The Patriots Once, We Can Almost Beat Them Again’.
“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.” - George Washington
The National Priorities Project conducted a study. The study indicated that the majority of Army recruits are coming from households with income between 30 and 60 thousand per year.
The Army has lowered standards for recruits because they can’t meet their recruiting goals. As a result of the lower standards, we can expect to see a sharp increase in the number of recruits coming from families with household incomes well below 30 thousand.
The populations that will be most affected by this are rural and inner-city. No coincidence that these communities also have the lowest level of college grads. Also no coincidence that these populations are much less likely to be very well aware of how badly the government is treating our Veterans. The people that are very well aware are staying out of the military in droves.
So, as it has been before it will be so again. The bulk of the burden will be carried by the least of those among us. They will be the majority of people killed in war, and will be the people who are unable to effectively mitigate their demons if they survive the war. And because our government won’t treat and appreciate these people appropriately, we can expect to see the suicide rates among these groups go on unabated.
Please always remember and never forget: It is cheaper to bury a dead Veteran than it is to take care of a living Veteran.
(Click on image for full size view)
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will pay $8,519,708.00 in salary to committee staffers this year.
The highest paid staffer on the committee, Philip Barnett, receives a salary of $164,000.
We’re talking just salaries now and that amount does not include any fringe benefits.
Based on our interactions with the committee between December 13th 07, and up until a week ago, and the hearing yesterday, the second hearing regarding Veterans Charities, we believe they overspent by about 8 million on salaries for staffers.
The hearing was reduced to nothing but ad-hominem arguments, mud slinging, and hyperbole. Now, that is true of almost every Congressional hearing, but this one really stood out.
At the first hearing on Veterans Charities, Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton stated that Members of Congress receive “modest” salaries. In this hearing she said she was all about disclosure. When we tried to get clarification of her “modest salaries” remark we received no response. No disclosure whatsoever. Hypocrisy by a Politician? Surely not!
It turns out that we were not the only ones denied requested information by the committee staffers. According to one of the Republican committee members, his staff wasn’t given any preliminary information on the hearing until Wednesday night. The night before the hearing.
One question that we asked the committee over-and-over was why none of the “Big” Veterans Charities like VFW, DAV, PVA, AMVETS, and American Legion were not hauled before the committee like so many “little” Veterans Charities were. We never received an explanation. What we suspect is that the “Big 5″ Veterans Charities have amassed so much political power that they are considered “off limits” by the Congressional Investigators.
It also happens that the “Big 5″ are all Chartered by Congress, which seems to mean that they are above reproach. As a result of the amassed political power and the chartered status, these organizations are now able to collude with impunity and actually are allowed to submit what is called an “Independent Budget” to Congress in special hearings held annually for that sole purpose.
Despite that these groups combined only represent about 1.2 million of the total Veteran population of about 20 million, they drive the entire Congressional agenda on Veterans Affairs.
As a result of their collusion among themselves and the “joined at the hip” status these groups have with the VA, most of their recommendations will inevitably include giving the VA more money.
Despite a growing amount of evidence that the VA is one of the most poorly managed bureaucracies ever created and the amount of Fraud, Waste and Abuse of the taxpayers money the VA receives is incomprehensible, the VA propaganda machine has successfully integrated these big charities into their spin and rotation machine.
One Media Rep from the VFW stated on CNN: “All 238,000 employees of the VA are Miracle Workers.”
That statement speaks volumes about how well that VA has seamlessly integrated these groups into the quid pro quo network of self-serving criminals.
We digress.
Until the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform calls some of the most egregious offenders of the Public Trust in front of the committee, takes testimony under oath, and then prosecutes the ones who lie while under oath, it will simply be more posturing and pandering for votes.
It probably wouldn’t hurt to cut some of the fat from the committee staff either.
Today is the day that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a second hearing in Assessing Veterans Charities.
From the Committee’s website:
We have been trying for weeks to find out who will be witnesses and testifying at this hearing. The Committee staffers have adamantly refused to release the information to us or post the information on the website.
Why? Why are they keeping this information secret?
We’ll find out in a couple of hours.
One at Lambeau. One at Foxborough.
Forecast temperatures are -13 to 16. That’s fahrenheit for you Canadians.
No domes. Open stadiums.
Cold. Snow. Frozen snot.
Number 4 handing it off to number 25.
Now that’s Football.
Two Kentucky Law Enforcement Officers were murdered The 10th of January 2008.
Bell County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Pursifull, and his K9 partner King.
The two Law Enforcement Officers were parked on the side of a road waiting to join a high-speed pursuit.
The pursued were two juveniles who had put $38.00 in gas in their vehicle and then drove off without paying. During the high speed pursuit, the pursued drove directly into the vehicle that Pursifull and King were in at an extremely high rate of speed. The 17-year-old driver, from Delaware, and a 16-year-old passenger from Pennsylvania were slightly injured.
Leaving wothout paying for gas is commonly referred to as “Drive-Offs”, the number of drive-offs is directly proportionate to gas prices.
Big Oil has spent a great deal of money and energy on pressuring law enforcement and prosecutors to aggressively go after gas thieves.
In this particular case of aggressively pursuing gas thieves, a mother has to bury one of her sons. A wife is now a widow. Two little girls will grow up without their dad. Two juveniles and their families lives have, in an instant, been completely altered forever. And the Bell County Kentucky Sheriff’s Department lost 18% of their force.
And in other news, ExxonMobil reported that: “The Corporation distributed a total of $8.9 billion to shareholders in the third quarter through dividends of $1.9 billion and share purchases to reduce shares outstanding of $7.0 billion.”
We wonder how much money ExxonMobil will give the family of Deputies Pursifull and King, and Bell County taxpayers, either through generosity or litigation.
We want to express to the family of Pursifull and King our condolences. And all involved will be in our prayers.
How many politicians and bureaucrats have you heard say that we treat our Veterans better than any other country in the world?
When they say that, they might not have all of the facts.
Example: The UK pays an GBP equivalent average of $30,000.00 per year.
The USofA pays an average of $ 8,575.oo per year.
Just the facts.
